Sunday, 16 December 2012

The founders of last.fm left the company a long time ago. CBS, the current owners, try to milk the worlds most popular music service to the last penny. As a result, last.fm radio streaming is now only available in less than 5% of the countries on the planet. Germans, americans, and british can listen for free on the last.fm website, or for money in the desktop client. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Brazil you can listen with a paid subscription. The rest of the world is not allowed to listen to last.fm, not even if you pay.

There were ways around these ridiculous geographic restrictions, but no more. Alternative last.fm apps CoboltFM and KLastFM are really dead now. Last.fm, pulled the plug on free streaming for almost everyone, and most of the planet can't stream at all.

Grooveshark rocks on

Are you a last.fm refugee looking for alternatives? Then Grooveshark is for you. It's a global jukebox with more music than anyone else, and with the right apps it's available worldwide. For free.

My favourite Grooveshark app is Dood's Music Streamer. You can search music, play it, download it, and it can turn your play queue into custom radio stations. It scrobbles everything you play to last.fm too.

Dood's Music Streamer plays custom radio stations based on your play queue. It's not as good as the custom last.fm radio stations, because Grooveshark only looks at your current play queue whereas last.fm uses your entire scrobble history to build your personal radio station. But with last.fm being dead and buried, Grooveshark radio in Dood's Music Streamer is better than nothing.